[KS] Article on Korean Studies in The Korea Herald

[James Turnbull]

Dear list members,

On Wednesday the following article on Korean Studies was published in the Korea Herald, which I thought would be of obvious interest to members. Please forgive me for copying and pasting the article in full rather than providing a link, but unfortunately the Korea Herald makes articles subscriber-only after only a week or so.


Regards,

James Turnbull.
http://thegrandnarrative.wordpress.com/



Korean studies need
support worldwide
 
On the occasion of its 55th anniversary on Aug. 15, The
Korea Herald is offering a series of articles looking into ways to make Korea a more comfortable and friendly place for expatriates to live. The following is
the 13th installment. - Ed.
 
Jane Klem is studying for a masters program on the use of
metaphors in newspaper journalism in Vancouver, Canada. What's notable is
her focus: comparing Canadian and Korean newspapers
. 
Klem's choice reflects her interest and experiences in Korea,
which come from her five-year stay here as an English teacher. "I chose to
work in Korea because I knew almost nothing about the country besides the Korean War,"
she says.
 
The number of foreigners who, like Klem, have developed a
passion about Korea,
its language and culture, is steadily increasing, illustrating the potential of
Korean studies. But there are still many issues to be resolved when it comes to
the promotion of Korean studies, and Korean language programs abroad, experts
say.
 
The Korean government is keen to nurture Korean specialists
in and outside of Korea,
encouraging professional researchers and graduate students to major in Korean
studies and related subjects. The question is whether the Korean government,
domestic agencies and foreign universities offering Korean studies programs are
setting up solid programs to produce more experts on Korea and Korean culture.
 
Last month, Robert Buswell, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, visited Seoul at the invitation of the Korea Foundation, and gave a speech about the current
status of Korean studies in the last two decades in North America,
stressing the overall growth. A symbolic fact that bolstered his point was that
he was recently elected as president of the Association of Asian Studies, the
first ever appointment for a Korean studies researcher in the organization's
67-year history.
 
Buswell, however, pointed out that there were far fewer
Korean specialists in the United States than scholars of China and Japan. He
added that Korean specialists have other critical issues to tackle, such as
recruitment of new students and support for those who have already made a
strong commitment to establish themselves.
 
The Korea Foundation, the country's biggest state-run agency
devoted to promoting Korea studies abroad, is fully aware of the positive
developments, especially the stronger recognition of Korean culture, and is in
the process of mapping out more viable strategies and funding.
 
"Our long-term goal is to form a network of experts on Korea so that more people around the world can better understand Korea,"
says Yim Sung-joon, president of Korea Foundation, in an interview with The
Korea Herald. "Certainly, the status of Korea and its culture has
witnessed a noticeable improvement across the world, thanks partly to the
Korean pop culture boom, known as the 'Korean Wave,' but we are yet to draw up
plans to meet the surging demand more effectively."
 
KoreaFoundation 
 
Korea Foundation has long focused on academic projects and
Korean language education abroad by promoting exchange programs, holding forums
and extending financial support to researchers and academic institutions. But
demand for Korean studies is outpacing supply by a wide margin, posing fresh
challenges for the Korea Foundation.
 
Yim argues that demand for Korean studies, sparked by the
Korean Wave, is fairly high in Southeast Asia. For
instance, a state university in Indonesia set up a Korean language department two years ago and recruited only a couple
of lecturers. This year, the Korean language department received over 1,000
applications, even though there were places for just 40 students.
 
Yim says a number of colleges in Southeast Asia called for the Korea Foundation to arrange the dispatch of Korean specialists,
but the agency finds it difficult to secure qualified Korean studies experts,
due mainly to the lack of funding from the government and the private sector
. 
The fellowship and scholarship programs - the very heart of
Korea Foundation's projects - are granted to just 200 applicants per year, Yim
says. "We know that the number of fellowships and scholarships falls far
short of demand, but we have yet to persuade related government agencies to
increase the budget for our programs," he says.
 
Daniele Smerilli, student of Sapienza University in Rome,
is one of Korea Foundation's fellowship recipients. He changed his major
language from Japanese to Korean for his master's course and found strong
motivation during his study trip to Korea in 2006, when he had the opportunity to improve his language skills at the
Kyunghee University Institute for International Education for one academic
year.
 
"The journey I did in 2006 as fellow student for the
Korean Foundation Fellowship Program has been for me of fundamental importance,
giving me the opportunity to meet many other students of Korean studies from
all over Europe," he says. "That experience
gave me the confidence that I was going on the right way with my studies and
guided me to the choice of my main field of interest."
 
Foreign graduate students majoring in Korean studies or
related subjects say the role of Korea Foundation is significant. "The
Korea Foundation already has a very important role. It is actively and
effectively supporting research centers as well as researchers and
students," says Florence Galmiche, a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of
Sociology of Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales.
 
Galmiche was first drawn to Siberian culture and then
shifted her attention to Korea,
ending up with a master's degree in Korean anthropology. Galmiche is now in Korea,
working on her thesis on Korean Buddhism, and she says the Korea Foundation has
helped conduct her current research and offered intensive Korean language
instruction. 
But the availability of texts and reference materials about Korea has posed a problem, she says. "As there is not very much research done
yet in anthropology or sociology about Korean Buddhism, it is very exciting but
at the same time, as I am not yet very experienced, it is sometimes difficult
to find more books or articles in social sciences about religion in
Korea," she explains. 
 
Kanokwan Sarojna, professor of Oriental Languages at Brapha University, Thailand,
says more Korean language textbooks targeting different audiences should be
created. 
In Thailand,
Korean studies began to expand from the mid-1990s, but it is still difficult to
secure qualified Korean language teachers, largely due to the shortage of
textbooks customized for local students, Sarojna says. 
 
"The proportion of Korean language and literature
classes is very small compared with other subjects," she says. "One
reason for that is the lack of textbooks, because existing ones are designed
for a general audience."
 
Franklin Rausch, a Ph.D. candidate at the Asian Studies
department of the University of Columbia, Canada, says he also benefited from
the Korea Foundation's program. But many foreign students, Rausch explains, had
never heard Korean spoken until they entered college, so it takes a lot of time
to be able to learn enough to be able to conduct research in Korean as well as
in other necessary languages, such as classical Chinese. 
It is important to extend more financial support aimed at
helping Koreanists so that they focus their energy on learning, especially for
language training, Rausch says, adding that Korea should establish more Korean study centers and endowed professorships in
universities outside of Korea.
"That would help create jobs for Koreanists and allow them to teach in
universities, which might otherwise have few or even no specialists in Korean
studies," he says.
 
As with other foreign students, the biggest challenge for Xu
Liang, a Ph. D. candidate for Korean studies at the Institute of International Studies Affairs at Fudan University in Shanghai, China,
was the acquisition of Korean language skills.
 
To help resolve the language education issue, Xu suggested
that the Korean government set up more schools in other countries to transport
Korean language, culture, and history. He also suggests that Korea take its cue from China.
In recent years, the Chinese government has been aggressively building up what
is known as Confucian schools across the world. Following the Chinese model, Xu
says, Korea should offer more free Korean language courses in other countries.
 
"Institutions and colleges in Korea should offer more opportunities to exchange academics and students with other
countries, or offer more scholarship and money for foreign students and
scholars related to Korean studies," Xu says.
 
Language issue

A graduate student in Seattle, Washington State, who wishes to remain
anonymous, says the language issue is urgent. "I think Korean language is
also a big issue, and the fact remains that many Western scholars of Korea are not as fluent in Korean (especially academic Korean) as Western scholars of China and Japan are in Chinese and Japanese," she says.
 
China has what is called the IUP program and Taiwan runs the
ICLP program, both of which focus on learning Chinese for academic purposes,
usually providing a year or longer of very intensive study. Japan has the Yokohama Center and other comparable programs that last a year or more.
 
"Although university intensive Korean programs at
Sogang, Yonsei or Seoul National University are decent, they don't
approach the intensity or continue to as advanced a level of the Chinese and
Japanese programs," she says.
 
For this reason, U.S. fellowships such as the Blakemore Freeman Fellowship for advanced language
study (a fellowship that many top scholars in Asian studies participate in at
some point in their careers) mostly fund Chinese and Japanese language
students, and rarely Korean, she says.
 
She suggests that Korea needs to develop a comparable intensive language program for graduate students
and others who need academic Korean skills, as the language issue is the
biggest obstacle to producing top-notch scholars from overseas.
 
Concerning the training of non-Korean experts on Korea,
Ross King, professor of Korean and head of Asian Studies department at University of British Columbia, says there is
certainly a positive change in the profile of researchers - including himself.
 
"I am the first professor in the field over here who
was not earlier a Peace Corps volunteer, a missionary, a U.S. armed forces member, or a spy. In other words, Korea and Korean have become important enough now that pure intellectual interest is
bringing people to study it."
 
But Koreanists feel a sense that they are decades behind
Chinese and Japanese specialists, and do not get the extra resources necessary
to make up lost ground. "Korean studies professors have a tougher row to
hoe because we also need to have expertise in and knowledge about China and Japan, but
not vice versa," King says.
 
He says the key issue is lack of long-term, secure funding,
because many positions are unstable and based on "soft money" that
could disappear if the economy turns sour. 
King says the level of Korean investment in overseas Korean
studies, as well as the understanding in Korea - whether by government agencies or by private industry - of the importance of
Korean studies and especially Korean language studies is "pathetically
low."
 
"For Korea,
globalization is understood as a one-way street: Koreans learning English. But
it is a two-way street, and moreover, Korea's crazed enthusiasm for English
comes with an opportunity cost vis-a-vis its own language and culture - to
offset this cost and to rectify some of the damage being done by Englishmania,
the ESL industry in Korea should be tithed
(taxed), with the proceeds going to a special fund to promote Korean language,
both overseas and at home," King says
. 
Aside from the funding issue, leading Korean studies
scholars such as Buswell pointed out that more studies should be steered toward
pre-modern Korea,
considering the imbalance caused by the preferences for Korea's
modern periods.
 
Marion Eggert, professor and chair of the Korean studies
department at Bochum University, Germany,
agrees: "Korean studies programs need to balance education on modern and
pre-modern issues." 
 
Eggert says that freshmen in Korean studies often start out
with a noted interest in contemporary society and culture and less interest in
historical issues. "This changes remarkably over the course of their
studies. Many B.A. graduates, but certainly the majority of M.A. graduates are
deeply interested in pre-modern issues, including pre-modern forms of the
Korean language and 'hanmun' (classical Chinese)," he says.
 
This awareness of the importance of understanding Korea historically can only be nurtured by systematically exposing students to the
richness of Korea's
cultural heritage and the many interesting issues in Korean history, he says
. 
Eggert says he doubts institutions in Korea can train Korea experts for export to other countries. "The questions a Hungarian or
Spaniard asks about Korea will differ from Korean self-analysis; which means that Korean studies experts
for Hungary and Spain must be
home-grown to some extent," he suggests
. 
Government role
 
The Korean government, however, should continue to extend
support to Korean studies students in Europe so that
they could spend one or two semesters in Korea during their student years, Eggert says. "Especially for undergraduates,
scholarships are rare, and student exchanges are based on self-financing which
is too burdensome for undergraduates who yet lack confidence that they will be
able to earn a living with as exotic a field of study as Korean studies,"
he says. 
 
Offering more financial support is not enough, says Pankaj
Mohan, professor at department of Korean studies at the University of Sydney,
Australia.
 
"Foundations in Korea need to revise their strategy and provide grants or publication subsidies to
only those holding Ph.D. degrees in Korean studies from a recognized
university," Mohan says.

Lax scrutiny about the qualifications of applicants for
grants, Mohan says, resulted in a series of undesirable situations. For
instance, in one Indian university, a couple of researchers have set up an
association of Korean researchers, and an institute in southern India which has
nothing to do with Korean studies, and organized a conference on Korea in 2007.
A visiting professor from an Indian university with no background in Korean
studies edits a book on Korea every year which mostly includes papers by those who have no understanding of
Korean studies. 
 
"They all receive grants from various foundations in Korea.
These individuals are mostly interested in making money or earning cheap fame,
and not advancing the cause of Korean studies," Mohan says. 
 
Rigorous scrutiny for qualified grant recipients does not
necessarily mean that state-run agencies should take full control, many argue.
John Lie, professor of Sociology department at University of California, Berkeley,
says Korean studies must avoid the trap of nationalism.
 
"The Korean government may be effective in many things.
However, there's a natural limit of state power and wisdom in matters of
academic and scientific research. To be effective, in other words, it must cede
decision-making powers to autonomous scholarly or scientific bodies," Lie
argues. "The key is to promote Korean studies beyond the core audience of
ethnic Koreans." 
 
But Yamamoto Miyabi, a Ph.D. candidate at the East Asian
Languages and Cultures Department of California, Berkeley, says that one of the
largest problems in promoting Korean studies lies in the desire for the Korean
institutions to see names that do not look Korean or to see people who do not
look Asian.
 
"I think there is a slight obsession of wanting to
promote Korean studies to 'foreigners,' which seems to be understood as
non-gyopos," she says.
 
The definition needs to be re-examined thoroughly, Miyabi
asserts, saying that in the United States,
for instance, most scholars in the field of Jewish studies are Jewish and so
are scholars of African-American studies. "I think that Korean gyopos also
can compose a large part of Korean studies and there is nothing wrong with
that. However, if this is solely a result of a lack of adequate Korean language
education, the problem of Korean pedagogy needs to be addressed," she
says.
 
Jeong-hee Lee-Kalisch, a professor at the Department of East
Asian Art History at Free University in Berlin, says that one of the essential
tasks for the Korean government is to help form international networks among
Korean studies scholars.
 
As part of efforts to set up international networks,
Lee-Kalisch says she is now trying to set up a library and digital data on
Korean art in cooperation with the national museums of Korea and establish the study of Korean art history at the Association for Korean
Studies in Europe


Marc Duval, professor of Romance languages at Zurich University, Switzerland,
says that there are two conditions to be met before government efforts can
produce any tangible results. First, the government should help nurture an
education of superior quality within the country at university level. Second,
it should pursue an education policy that promotes diverse languages and
cultures, given that a cultural policy tends to promote reciprocity.
 
Korea Foundation president Yim Sung-joon says the agency is
trying hard to improve overall research conditions for Korean studies scholars
and students worldwide, but when it comes to the crucial funding problem, more
help from the private sector is needed.

"Japan Foundation takes the lead in promoting its culture
and language overseas but many private companies such as Toyota and Nissan offer a wide range of programs and extend financial support,"
Yim says.
 
"Similarly, the Korean government may take lead, but
what we really need now is more support from the private sector in Korea,"
he says.
 
By Yang Sung-jin 
(insight at heraldm.com)

2008.09.03


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